Case Study

Challenge:

Reduce collisions and lower the insurance costs for mass transit.

Summary:

The US Transportation Research Board and the Washington State Transit Insurance Pool conducted a pilot program and research study to evaluate wether collision avoidance system, Mobileye Shield+ could reduce collisions and lower insurance costs.

About Mobileye Shield+ Technology

Mobileye Shield+ is a collision avoidance system specifically designed for transit buses and large municipal vehicles plagued with blind spots. Powered by sophisticated computer vision algorithms, Mobileye Shield+ continuously monitors the road ahead and its blind spots. Based on what the cameras have detected, the system issues visual and audio alerts in real time to assist drivers in avoiding or mitigating collisions with pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles.

Researching Solutions to The High Cost of Collisions

A serious problem is facing the bus transit industry. Between 2002 and 2014, buses and vanpools in the U.S. were involved in 85,391 collisions, experienced 1,340 fatalities, 201,382 injuries, and created expenditures for casualty and liability expenses of $5.7 billion (Note 1). The Washington State Transit Insurance Pool ran a pilot program1 to investigate whether and to what extent real-time collision-avoidance technology could help reduce collisions.
• 38 buses were equipped with Mobileye Shield+ including three buses in ‘stealth’ mode that served as a control group.
• The buses were also configured with telematics in order to collect and transmit the warning alert data issued by Mobileye Shield+, before an imminent collision with a vehicle, cyclist or pedestrian ahead and in blind spots. • Data collection period ran from April 1, 2016 through June 30, 2016. Buses equipped with Shield+ systems logged 352,129 miles and 23,798 operating hours.

Key Findings:

• Better driving behavior than control group Drivers of buses in the active fleet triggered fewer alert warnings than those who drove in “stealth mode”, over the course of the study. This suggests that merely receiving warning alerts led to an improvement in driver behavior.

• Easy retrofit limiting time off-road
Installations were successfully completed on six different types of transit buses within the 8-hour target.

• High accuracy detection technology “[Mobileye] Shield+ rarely missed potential conflicts and was found to be robust in challenging scenarios such as adverse weather, low lighting condition, direct sunlight, and shadows.”

• Tried and retained “Although the project data collection period ended on June 30, 2016, three transit agencies: Ben Franklin, King County Metro, and Pierce Transit, elected to retain the Shield+ pilot systems on their buses.”

1 Reported as ‘Active Safety-Collision Warning Pilot’ Study; full Study (including 2002-2014 statistics and explanation of methodology) available at https://goo.gl/QzYUqK. 2 I.e., they collected data but did not issue warning alerts to drivers. 3 System failing to issue warning alert when it should have done, as opposed to false positives, system issuing warning alert when it need not have done. 4 Calculation of the potential reduction in claims based on upper bound and lower bound annual claims reduction estimates.